Facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were --- Part 2

Hi X,

Here is the letter I was working on, it’s kind of a repeat of my response to your last e-mail, but I already had written these words for you, so I thought I send them to you.

Sorry, my English was really bad in my last e-mail, but I was at work and I keep getting interrupted by people making it really hard for me to concentrate on my writing. 

I am glad my letter helped you clarify things. Yes, once we understand the repressed feelings of the child we once were and consciously feel them within the context of our own childhood, it becomes a compass for life and no longer blind us, so we are able to see ourselves and others clearly and therefore know the best steps to take care of ourselves in whatever situation we find ourselves in the present moment.

I know it’s hard to be alone with our painful feelings. When the repressed feelings of the child I once was were triggered, I too lost everything in my life, from coming to the end of my dancing carrier and not knowing what I would do next to sustain myself, to my boyfriend leaving me and I knew I could not count on my family for support, so the fear from the uncertainty in the present moment and future it triggered the repressed fears of the child I once was and it cause me few panic attacks of being afraid of stepping out of my house and talking to people, but once I realized that the panic attacks was because of the repressed emotions of the child I once was that they were paralyzing me to take care of myself in the present moment those intense fears would start to subside and the panic attacks started to happen less and if it happened would not last as long and one day in spite the present and future still uncertainty I felt strong and completely trusted myself to take care of me no matter in what situation I would find myself in the present.

It’s understandable you feel hurt by your ex-boyfriend not calling you because it triggers the agonizing painful feelings of the child you once were. You both are reenacting each other’s childhood drama and trigging each other’s repression. 

The person that triggers our repression is never the right person to help us navigate and clarify our painful feelings. 

You feeling angry at him is understandable, but this anger is of the child you once were at your mother for leaving you alone when you were a defenseless little boy, but you are not defenseless anymore, the adult in you can witness the plight of the child you once were and develop compassion for this child that had to suffer so much all alone.

I wrote the letter below to someone that wrote me a while back and it might be helpful to you too.

Wishing you strength and courage,

Sylvie

Hi R,

Sorry, it took so long to finish your letter, but things kept getting in the middle of it. You might not like what I am going to write and might trigger some anger or unpleasant feelings in you, In Alice Miller’s book “Free from Lies” page 136, she says: “Once the client has achieved the ability to cope with old feelings and productive use of the“triggers,” there is no further need of the therapist’s presence.” We cannot liberate ourselves unless we became fully conscious of our true plight and where we really are. By reading your last e-mail I don’t see you consciously feeling your repressed feelings, I just see you getting close to the entrance, and not making use of the present triggers effectively, but too scared to go in and consciously witness and feel the excruciating feelings of the child you once were and you keep running around trapped in a labyrinth without a way out and stuck in your story compulsively hanging to the illusion of finding a substitute mother figure. When I say that we must wait while we are going through our intense excruciating painful feelings of the child we once were to take action or make life-changing decisions, I don’t mean we stop taking care of ourselves, to the contrary we must take and keep our lives in our own hands and take responsibility for it and do what we need to do take care of ourselves and at the same time taking the time to consciously feel the feelings of the child we once were, this is very tricky, because we need to keep adult conscious at the same time we witness and feel the repressed emotions of the child we once were.

I understand your fears of being alone with the repressed feelings and hanging tight to the hope or illusion to find a substitute mother figure to be there for you all the way holding your hand, that, will understand and give you the love you so much needed as a small child, but this is an illusion that will keep you reenacting your childhood drama over and over again, the chances of finding a true enlightened witness that can be with you all the way in the physical level are very slim and this was a need of the child you once were and now no one can really make up for the love you needed as a small boy, even if you find the most loving place and supportive people, you would still have to feel the pain of not have been loved. We have to become, an enlightened witness, to the child we once were still inside us and give her/him the love and attention that we deserved but never got if we want to be free. 

I see yourself surrounding yourself with people, who themselves have not broken free from their own emotional prison, so you don’t have to feel the fear of being alone, and they actually distract you from entering your true painful feelings and getting through them. These words from Alice Miller’s book “The Drama of the Gifted Child” come to mind: “Because of his early experiences with his mother, he cannot believe that this need not happen. If he gives way to this fear and adapts himself, the therapy slides over into the realm of the false self, and the true self remains hidden and undeveloped. It is therefore extremely important that the therapist not allow his own needs to impel him to formulate connections that the patient himself is discovering with the help of his own feelings. Otherwise, he is in danger of behaving like a friend who brings a good meal to a prisoner in his cell, at the precise moment when that prisoner has the chance to escape --- perhaps to spend his first night hungry and without shelter, but in freedom nevertheless. Since this first step into unknown territory would require a great deal of courage, the prisoner may comfort himself with his food and shelter and thus miss his chance and stay in prison.” 

I see your mother and substitute figures bring the good meal right at the moment you start entering your painful feelings and blocking you from fully entering, exploring them, and preventing you from getting through them to the other side to real freedom.

Wishing you strength and courage,

Sylvie

P.S. To read parts 1 and 3 click in the links below:

Facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were --- Part 1

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/11/facing-and-feeling-repressed-emotions.html

Facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were --- Part 3

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/12/facing-and-feeling-repressed-emotions.html

Psychoanalysis and most therapies hinder people’s liberation and autonomy

X,

Thank you for writing back and for telling me the sad painful truth. I had the feeling that Martin Miller might not have arrived at a place of true liberation, understanding, and compassion for himself and his mother, but I guess I needed to have validation from you too, that my feelings were correct. This must be painful for you too, not, to have Martin Miller on your side to help take the insights and the very important discoveries Alice Miller made, to other people with the courage to face and feel, but are alone waiting for someone like Alice Miller to help them clarify and understand their feelings in the context of their own childhood, like I was all my life, so they can liberate themselves and more people can be saved and stop the ignorance from continuing into the next generation. 

My story is a witness and confirmation of Alice Miller’s insights and discoveries to be correct because I experienced it and tested on myself. Reading your words and seeing how Martin Miller is deceiving himself by collaborating with a person that has no genuine feelings to write a biography about his mother that is going to exploit his weakness to the maxim and be a feast to her and all psychopaths like her, psychopaths prey on people’s weakness, it is just one more proof to me that Alice Miller’s discoveries are correct and psychoanalysis and most therapies out there don’t work, but repeat endless people’s childhood drama and hinder people’s true liberation. 

Alice Miller liberated herself from the labyrinth of the psychoanalysis world in her fifties. Now I understand when Alice shared in one of her books that her intense discussions with her son helped her stop her compulsions, because of these intense discussions with her son, she was able to see clearly and confirmed how psychoanalysis keeps people stuck in their childhood drama and seeing her son lost in the labyrinth of psychoanalysis had to be hard for Alice. 

Also confirms Barbara Rogers' IFS therapy does not work either, because if it worked she would not be stuck in her childhood drama anymore and would not be reenacting her childhood drama endlessly by exploiting others the same way she was exploited when she was a defenseless child. Just like Alice said: it takes courage to face and feel our painful truths, intelligence alone is not enough, but it rather helps create a lot of seductive lies.

Best,

Sylvie

No, abortion is not murder no matter what they say.

If abortion is murder - what should we do?

DEBATE

Vi borde fundera över de faktiska konsekvenserna av att förbjuda abort innan vi diskuterar frågan, skriver filosofen och läraren Sofia Jeppsson. We should think about the real consequences of banning abortion before discussing the issue writes philosopher and teacher Sofia Jeppsson.

Det är inte bara amerikanska konservativa politiker som anser att abort är mord och bör förbjudas; åsikten finns även i Sverige. It's not just American conservative politicians who believe that abortion is murder and should be outlawed; the view is also found in Sweden. Men vilka blir följderna om vi tar detta på allvar? But what are the consequences if we take this seriously?

Först ett klargörande: För egen del anser jag inte att abort är mord. First, a clarification: Personally I do not believe that abortion is murder. Det är inte alltid mord att döda en mänsklig organism – tänk på en kultur av mänskliga cancerceller. It is not always murdered to kill a human organism - think of a culture of human cancer cells. Det är inte heller mord att förhindra en potentiell människa från att komma till – varje gång vi ägnar oss åt något annat än oskyddat vaginalt samlag förhindras uppkomsten av potentiella människor. It is not murder to prevent a potential human being from coming to - every time we engage in anything other than unprotected vaginal intercourse to prevent the occurrence of potential people. Börjar man diskutera vad människovärdet (eller djurvärdet) beror på, kommer man i regel in på medvetandet. If you start discussing what human dignity (or animals) value depends on, are generally used in the consciousness. Diverse kroppsliga reaktioner på stimuli finns väldigt tidigt hos fostret, men utvecklingen av synapser i hjärnan tar inte ordentlig fart förrän i vecka 20. Various bodily reactions to stimuli are very early in the fetus, but the development of synapses in the brain does not really accelerate until week 20. Medvetande kräver tillräckligt med synapser, och är knappast möjligt innan dess, skriver Olof Lagercrantz i I barnets hjärna. Consciousness requires enough synapses, and is hardly possible before then, writes Olof Lagercrantz in the child's brain.

Om jag, för diskussionens skull, antar att abort är mord. If I, for the sake of argument, suppose that abortion is murder. Hur bör vi då agera för att stoppa den enorma mordvåg som pågår? How should we act to stop the huge mordvåg going on?

Att förbjuda abort innebär att kvinnor kan tvingas upplåta sina livmödrar för att hålla liv i en annan individ, trots att donationer i alla andra sammanhang är frivilliga. Banning abortion means that women may be forced to make their uteruses to keep the life of another individual, although donations in all other contexts are optional. Någon kanske vill hävda att påtvingad graviditet och födsel är ett rättvist straff för den som haft oskyddat sex, men detta argument håller inte. Someone might want to argue that forced pregnancy and childbirth is a just punishment for those who had unprotected sex, but this argument does not hold. Ska staten straffa folk för oskyddat sex måste det först göras olagligt, och sedan måste straffet vara något som kan utdömas i domstol för alla kön. Should the state punish people for unprotected sex, there must first be made illegal, and then the punishment must be something that can be imposed in court for all genders. Däremot kan man förstås argumentera för att det är viktigare att förhindra mord än att ta hänsyn till människors kroppsliga integritet. However, one can, of course, argue that it is more important to prevent murder than to take account of people's bodily integrity.

Även om vi går med på detta kvarstår dock ett problem: Abortförbud minskar inte antalet aborter särskilt mycket. Even if we agree to this remains a problem: Abortion ban does not reduce the number of abortions that much. Enligt WHO utfördes runt 26 millioner legala och 20 millioner illegala aborter i världen år 1995. According to WHO conducted around 26 million legal and 20 million illegal abortions in the world in 1995. Vill man verkligen få stopp på dessa mord, så måste ett abortförbud kompletteras med andra åtgärder. If you want to really put a stop to these killings, so must one abortion ban supplemented with other measures.

Att helt enkelt uppmuntra människor att avstå från sex verkar inte vara effektivt; USA, där ”abstinence only”-sexundervisning är vanligt, har fler tonårsaborter per capita än Sverige, skriver Läkartidningen (nr 23, 2003). Simply encouraging people to abstain from sex do not seem to be effective, the United States, where "abstinence only" sexundervisning is common, has more teenage abortions per capita than Sweden, writes Läkartidningen (No. 23, 2003). Att kombinera abortförbud med gratis preventivmedel skulle förmodligen lyckas bättre. Combining abortion ban with free contraceptives would probably do better. Det finns dock en möjlig metod som aldrig prövats, men som i stort sett skulle få slut på alla aborter: Vi skulle kunna ha obligatorisk sterilisering av alla pojkar i unga år. However, there is one possible method that has never been tried, but that would largely put an end to all abortions: We could have mandatory sterilization of all the boys at a young age. Innan operationen får de donera sperma, så att planerade graviditeter fortfarande är möjliga genom inseminering. Before the surgery, they donate sperm so that planned pregnancies are still possible through insemination. Detta innebär förstås ett ingrepp i pojkarnas kroppsliga integritet, men den som vill förbjuda abort har ju redan gått med på att det är viktigare att förhindra mord. This, of course, means an intervention in the boys' physical integrity, but those who want to ban abortion has already agreed that it is important to prevent murder. Så fram för tvångssterilisering! So up for forced sterilization!

Eller så behåller vi helt enkelt den fria aborten. Or so we keep just the free abortion.

Sofia Jeppsson, Sofia Jeppsson
filosofie doktor i praktisk filosofi och lärare Ph.D. in Philosophy and teachers
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.etc.se%2Fdebatt%2Fom-abort-ar-mord-%E2%80%93-vad-bor-vi-gora 

Also read: CNN Deleted all the Comments on the Abortions Stories on their Site and 
Removing the stigma

What is addiction really?

“Recovery From Self-Betrayal: What is addiction really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.

The drug business would not flourish if there were not so many people who, in refusing to acknowledge their wounds, are in a permanent state of self-betrayal.

Thus, people work to get rid of symptoms instead of searching out the cause.

There are plenty of means to combat symptoms of distress: medications, sermons, numerous "treatments," "miracles," threats, cults, pedagogical indoctrination and even blackmail.

They can all work for a while, but only because they reinforce the repression and reinforce the fear of resolving it.

However, many people who become abstinent this way are driven into another addiction because the real reasons for becoming addicted must be kept hidden.

A lot of money and fame comes from this business of repression because it satisfies the longing of so many grown-up children: to be loved as a good child (I am blind as you want me to be. I am ready to forget all your cruelty, even at the cost of my life. Can you love me now?).

In the long term, we have to pay a high price for this repression. The repressed story continues to try, again and again, to be heard at long last. Thus your plight will look for other symptoms, another language, until it is taken seriously enough. An addiction is an attempt by a person in despair, who is not allowed to be in despair, to get rid of his or her memory, to forget his or her plight.

Of course, this "solution" is no longer needed if the goal is exactly the opposite, if you want to remember, if you want to feel your plight and to understand its reasons, if you slowly become aware of why you were so afraid of acknowledging the reasons.

This can happen once you decide to stop running away, to stop betraying yourself, to allow the truth to enter your consciousness.

You decide to do so because you finally understand that everything else is useless and because you no longer want to watch your life go by before having even begun to live. You decide to stop betraying yourself because you understand that only you can give yourself the love and care you never received and that you can't do that as long as you deny the truth.” Breaking Down The Wall Of Silence: The Liberating Experience Of Facing Painful Truth by Alice Miller, page 126

Facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were --- Part 1

Hi X,

Thank you for writing sharing your heartbreaking story, no child should have to go through a nightmare like yours all alone like you did. I am so sorry you were born into a home of extreme horrors. I am glad to hear you found the Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice and helped you to start facing your own history. I would recommend you read also all her other books, because in every book she shows in a different context and perspective how different forms of child mistreatment affects us for the rest of our lives and helped me see more clear myself and those around me and go deeper, giving me the freedom to feel the whole range of my feelings responsibly, understand them and find resolution and eventually freedom.

I am glad to hear you have a therapist that has liberated himself and is accompanying you in your liberation. Finding a therapist that has liberated himself first is very rare, but I am sorry to hear you are going through intense excruciating feelings right now and your therapist is on vacation and not available to help you navigate through your feelings, sometimes even the best therapist can be a distraction from feeling the whole range of our repressed excruciating feelings of the child we once were. Being so afraid of our feelings is normal and wanting to kill ourselves to save ourselves from having to experience our excruciating feelings of the child we once were is very understandable, but feelings alone don’t kill, only actions kill, just be patient with yourself, once you understand these fears and put them within the context of your childhood they will start to subside and we start to see clear of the best steps to take to take care of ourselves in the present moment.

I am sorry your boyfriend left and is contributing to triggering the repressed feelings of the child you once were, but it could be a blessing in disguise because is forcing you to face and feel your feelings and no one to distract yourself with it might contribute to your true liberation.

While you were talking with your ex on the phone and you felt a kind of dependency on him is because the repressed wounded child in you has fallen into the illusion of this person becoming the substitute mother figure and make it all better and when you felt his distance started bursting this illusion and started triggering the pain of being abandoned as small child, but now no one in the external world can make up for the love you need as a child, but did not get. Now only the adult in you can find the courage to consciously feel what the child you once were had to endure at the hands of ignorant adults and mourn this loss. Allow yourself to feel this rage at your parents, just tell yourself this rage is of the child you once were at your parents for putting you through these horrors and injustice and you will not become a prisoner of it but will liberate you. We only become prisoners of our hate when directed at scapegoats, but once it is felt directed at the real culprits will start to subside and eventually free of hate. Sometimes we might become in contact with people that remind us of our childhood abusers and we get annoyed by them, but we will never again feel intense hate like that again, because now we are mature conscious and autonomous adults and no longer at the mercy of ignorant adults like we were as defenseless little children and if necessary we can walk away from any person that treats us badly.

Separation and independence from the family is the first step to our liberation, so we can have the freedom to feel all of our feelings and we only make contact with the family if we ever come into a place that we feel strong to be around them and know our limits of how much we can take of their ignorance, in some cases the abuse is so extreme like it seems to be in your case that any contact with the family might always be destructive to the person’s wellbeing, is a decision that each person has to make from themselves.

When I was going through the rage of the child I once was, was very hard to feel and at first I was directing it all at my triggers, my boyfriend and his new girlfriend for betraying me and not caring how they were affecting my life, but the moment I realize with the help of Alice Miller’s books that this intense rage was at my parents for bringing me into their crazy world without thinking what kind of life they were giving me and at my older brothers and sisters for blaming me for everything wrong in the family and for all their problems; once I made this connection that the intense hate was caused by my parents and my older sisters and brothers’ betrayal, my hate started to subside and understanding that everyone and my boyfriend were in the same boat as me that they too were reenacting their own childhood drama of being abandoned as small children. My boyfriend abandoning me when I was in need of his help with my trip, that I was planning at the time to Portugal, was triggering his own fears of abandonment and in order not to face and feel his own fears he run with a woman to distract himself from his own fears.

I hope that answers your question and helps you clarify your own feelings and move through them faster. Alice Miller believed that some painful feelings might be too agonizing to feel and endure alone and we need an enlightened witness present to help us clarify our feelings within the context of own childhood and for some people might be the case, everybody is different. I tried to find a therapist to accompany me, but I was not able to find one that truly understood me. Alice Miller books were my only enlightened witness and were enough for me, at moments was near unbearable to handle alone and I wished I had someone present that understood and helped me navigate through my feelings, probably I would have been able to liberate myself sooner, but I was able to endure it alone and eventually break through and liberate myself. You went through a very extreme case of child abuse that the feelings of the child you once were might be too unbearable to endure alone and you might need a sympathetic enlightened witness present to help you through it.

I am so sorry you had to live with the secret of being homosexual all by yourself for so many years. I am happy for you now that you feel safe to share yourself with people and no longer have to live alone with this secret.

I congratulate you for your courage to face and share your story and wish you much-continued courage and strength to get through the nightmare of your childhood and find resolution and freedom from it someday.

Sylvie

P.S. To read part 2 and 3 click on the links below:
Facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were --- Part 2
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/11/facing-and-feeling-repressed-emotions_29.html

Facing and feeling the repressed emotions of the child we once were --- Part 3
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/12/facing-and-feeling-repressed-emotions.html

Adoption is not the fairytale society wants you to believe

Every time people preach to me about adoption I want to scream, because carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth to a new being and then giving it up for adoption is one the most unconscious and cruel actions any woman can ever take, because this unresolved trauma will be transmitted into the next generations and to be felt until the end of time.

This last Saturday talking with a man at a party, he mentioned that he and his wife adopted a child. I try to help him see that his adopted child had suffered a trauma of separation at birth, but he denied that a trauma happened and I told him: how are you going to help your adopted child resolve this trauma if you don’t acknowledge a trauma has happened?

Then at that same party, I talked to someone else that has been adopted, but in total denial of his own trauma and completely unaware how he will unconsciously and compulsively will take revenge for what his mother did to him when he was just a little baby on his own children and on other vulnerable pregnant women seeking an abortion under the disguise of wanting to protect their unborn children, so others have the same fate as him.

He told me that he had paid for an abortion when he was young and regrets it, but he does not understand his unborn child is the lucky one that does not have to be the recipient of his repression and the living children are the unlucky ones that are going to be the scapegoats, recipient or poisonous container for his unresolved repression.

Repressed people want to protect the unborn, but the moment that new life is born, they do nothing to protect the rights of the new life, but instead, after a child is born, they protect the parents and especially they idealize the mother, just like Alice’s says: “…I don't think that gender makes a difference when it goes to cruelty. Active cruelty is the effect of endured violence and perversion in childhood and nothing else. Feminists dislike my statements very much when I write in many books (as the Drama, Banished Knowledge, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence and others) that the space society gives to man to rage and destroy life with impunity is the war and to women their home where they can do whatever they want to their babies and toddlers to teach them to obey. What they do in this way, never controlled, never punished, is to cripple millions of people who will never accuse them of their crimes because every child loves her/ his mother and would never, never put her in troubles. Rather they would hate the whole world or all women, but they own mother must stay protected from their hatred forever. In this way, we turn in a vicious circle of blindness. A brutally beaten child will, as an adult, prefer becoming a serial killer to accusing his mother of brutality. And the same is true for crazy dictators who even become "heroes" for whole nations because people learned so early to love and admire the persons who were cruel to them - no matter what they really did.”

So this man at the party preached to me how wrong abortion is and has no clue that he is driven by the dead hand of his own repression to unconsciously and compulsively take revenge on vulnerable women and children for the trauma he suffered as a little baby, so he can protect his mother from his latent hate.  My date after asked me: why you left me alone debating abortion with that man? And I told him: I have learned to walk away from people that are not able to open their eyes to see and feel, as child I could not walk away from emotionally blind people, but the beauty of being an autonomous adult is that we can walk away from anyone that refuses to open their eyes to see and feel, free at last!

“When did people start abusing their children? I do not know. In the 1980s there was a spate of feminist publications full of accounts of an early matriarchal community in which there was allegedly no violence and everyone lived together in peace. I have no way of knowing whether this is true, but today I see that, IN TERMS OF VIOLENCE, WOMEN ARE NO LESS GUILTY THAN MEN. UNFORTATUANALY, THE PEOPLE THEY ARE MOST LIKELY TO DO VIOLENCE TO ARE BABIES AND SMALL CHILDREN. Accordingly, the question that interested me is not the theoretical issue of what things were like earlier, but rather what I see now, and what other people prefer not to see because it causes them pain. Speculating about earlier times does no harm, but neither does it suggest any solutions for the damage done to children at a tender age. The idea that things were better in the “old days” stems perhaps from our childhood, a time when we found it impossible to believe that people can be so cruel to such tiny creatures. This made us hark back to better times. I do not know whether they actually existed. Was there ever such a place as Paradise? And if there was, why did God set up such cruel commandments in that Paradise? Why should human beings not eat from the tree of knowledge?” Taking from the book: “Free From Lies: Discovering Your True Needs” by Alice Miller
http://www.alice-miller.com/en/the-feeling-child/

People attack people like me that try to protect children, because it’s not my business how parents raise their children, they say, but it’s okay for them to interference in a women’s decisions if she should or not carry a pregnancy to term and give birth to a new life and they don’t see their hypocrisy, because a woman having an abortion has no effect on society, but parents having children to unconsciously use as their scapegoat for the wrongs done to them by their own parents affects all of us, just like Alice says: “Opposing Miller are those who claim that a law forbidding parents to hit their children brings us uncomfortably close to totalitarianism. Many people believe that smacking children remains a private right, and would have grave misgivings if government legislation intruded into an area as sacrosanct as the home. Her answer is emphatic: "You can't claim the right to play with nuclear weapons on your territory because they belong to you. Similarly, society's interests must go before your pleasure and your habits, and the government must defend these interests. “Parents may claim the right to hit children when they are small as though they are property. Yet as soon as those children become violent delinquents or drug abusers the same parents are eager to turn the problem over to society. The anonymous taxpayer has to fund the hospitals and prisons these once so eagerly disciplined teenagers will need."

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2014/05/it-is-never-okay-to-spank-beat-or-hit.html

"It is, in fact, not surprising to find that those who are both victims and apologist for the use of violence and severity against children are often those who most passionately proclaim their love of the unborn child, i.e., the kernel of life.  Abortion can, indeed, be seen as the most powerful symbol of the psychic annihilation and mutilation practiced since time immemorial on children.  But to combat this evil merely at the symbolic level deflects us from the reality we should not evade for a moment longer:  the reality of the abused and humiliated child, which, as a result of its disavowed and unresolved injuries, will insidiously become, either openly or aided by hypocrisy, a danger to society.

 

It is above all the children already born that have a right to life - a right to coexistence with adults in a world in which, with or without the help of the church, violence against children has been unequivocally outlawed.  Until such legislation exists, talk of “the right to life” remains not only a mockery of humanity but a contribution to its destruction."From the book: "Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth" By Alice Miller

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2011/01/protecting-life-after-birth.html 

The adopted man tried to show me how successful he was as evidence how well he turned out and showed me pictures of his children, but financial success and having children is not evidence how well they have turned out, he is too emotionally blind to see that I can see through the mask of success that he worked so hard to build and the illusions and lies that he believes in. I am happy for me that I am free from the lies people try to feed me and now I look back in my life and all the people that seemed so much smarter than me fell victim of societies’ illusions and lies and me that everyone tried to make me feel stupid and less than them, but I managed not to fall into societies’ traps, illusions, and lies, so who is the stupid one now?! This why I am happy most of the time and I have a permanent smile in my face, but it saddens me to see their children being victims of their lies and illusions and endlessly stuck in an emotional prison. Also, this words by Alice Miller come to mind: "Children who are told the truth and are not brought up to tolerate lies and cruelty can develop as freely as plant whose roots have not been attacked by pests (in our case, lies)" Alice Miller read more here 

Also, these words by Alice are so true: “You are right, unwanted children are usually mistreated. But there exist as a rule also a huge amount of people who were "wanted" indeed, but only for playing the role of the victims that their parents needed to be able to take revenge on. They were wanted to give their parents what the parents never had gotten from their own parents: love, adoration, attention and so many other things. Otherwise, why would so many people have five or more children when they have no time for them? Why do they adopt children if their body refuses to give them what they apparently "want?”
The never acknowledged, never felt pain of their childhood calls for being avenged. They go to church, they pray, they honor their parents, forgive them everything – and they mistreat their children at home, often in a very cruel way, AS IF THIS WERE THE MOST NATURAL THING, because they learned this so early. Their children learn this perverted behavior, also very early, and will later do the same; and so this perverse behavior continues for millennia. Unless people are willing to SEE the perversion of their parents and are ready to consciously refuse to imitate it.
You are not being "sickeningly sarcastic," you only dared to speak out the truth that most people are afraid of seeing or talking about.”

http://www.alice-miller.com/en/unwanted-children/

Are women Less Aggressive than Men?

In my view, women are by no means less aggressive than men. Of course, they are victimized and disadvantaged by men avenging themselves for the beating they received from their mothers. But women avenge themselves for such victimization and physical cruelty by taking it out on their little children, thus breeding new generations of avengers who consciously love and honor their parents.

I see no real difference between the cruelty of women and that of men, because both sexes have learned such sadism at the hands of their parents and caregivers at the time when their brains were still in the process of formation. As children, they were subjected to cruelty and even perversion, but they not allowed to defend themselves. So later take out their repressed anger on other defenseless people, frequently in the same way their parents treated them when they were small. Women frequently vent this acquired sadism on their children. While men also give free rein to it by victimizing employees at work or lower military ranks, or else participating in orgies of violence like genocide or terrorist attacks. The causes invariable lie in the repressed and totally denied suffering of their childhood (though most of them will insist that they had wonderful parents). People who were not humiliated, tormented, or beaten in their early years are incapable of sadism.

Women can live out all kinds of covert perversion on their children and torment them impunity as long as they call this behavior “good parenting.” Society idealizes mothers because people have never consciously realized that their own mothers treated them cruelly when they were small. Accordingly, women normally enjoy total immunity.

I see no sex-specific differences in the suicide bombers. I understand terrorism as an attempt to compensate for the humiliations these people were subjected to , but have never consciously perceived as such, by means of a “magnificent deed” (such as sacrificing their own lives for the sake of a group).

Though it is not difficult to understand this dynamic, there are not many people who would allow themselves to give up their denial and look the truth in the face. The fear felt by the tormented children they once were can prevent this all their lives.

From the book “Free from Lies: Discovering your true needs” By Alice Miller Page 140

http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2013/02/are-women-less-aggressive-than-men.html 

"Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful" - The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE
Right to Know One's Origins
“In all of us, there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.” - Alex Haley
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
- Cicero
Abuse in Adoption

“Regrettably, in many cases, the emphasis has changed from the desire to provide a needy child with a home to that of providing a needy parent with a child. As a result, a whole industry has grown, generating millions of dollars of revenues each year. ...” - United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003

Adoption in the Netherlands is "undutch" while America's love affair with it continues
Relinquishing a child for adoption in the Netherlands is considered "inhumane, unwomanly, undutch, not done," according to Theodore, one of First Mother Forum’s regular readers who comments frequently from across the pond.

As in Australia, England and Wales, adoption rates in the Netherlands are dramatically lower than in the US.* With a population of 16.7 million, one eighteenth that of the United States, the Netherlands has approximately 20 domestic infant adoptions each year compared to 15,000 domestic infant adoptions in the US. If Americans were relinquishing at the same rate as in the Netherlands, they would have given up a fraction of the babies relinquished today--a mere 360 babies, not 15,000. Why the discrepancy, we wanted to know. Theodore filled us in.
A Dutch native, he is familiar with the effects of adoption in his own family, due to what he refers to as an illegal grandparent adoption. He is currently working on a translation of a book about Jewish parents who were separated from their children in WW II, but got them back after the war.

RECOGNIZING LOSS TO MOTHER AND CHILD
As in the U.S., unmarried Dutch mothers suffered through a Baby Scoop Era. The high point was 1970 when about a thousand babies were relinquished. The reasons for the decline in adoptions after that was multifaceted, as in America, but a less prudish attitude throughout the country allowed for good sex education, readily available contraceptives, accessible and abortion. At the same time, welfare benefits improved. "Unmarried mothers are common and widely accepted, while public perception a woman who relinquishes her child is quite negative," he writes. "Surrendering one’s child became something simply “not done.” At the same time, quasi-official support for adoption declined as professionals recognized the loss to mother and child. Today adoption decisions are met with opprobrium; women who give up their babies are not looked upon favorably. (As they seem to be in America, we inject, given the kudos were given to Catelynn and Tyler of Sixteen and Pregnant celebrity.) About 50 percent of babies are born to unmarried mothers in the Netherlands, compared to 40 percent in the U.S. Today in the U.S. more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage--a reality that neither Lorraine or I could have imagined when our children were born in 1966 and we felt only deep shame and societal censure.

Unlike in the U.S. Dutch law allows adoption only by those who already have a parent relationship with the child, i.e. step- and foster children. There is no immediate handing over of a baby to a waiting couple or single adopter.
http://www.firstmotherforum.com/2012/04/adoption-in-netherlands-is-undutch.html#more

“Adoption’s inherent abuse of children and families
Adoption itself inflicts psychological harm on adoptees. Adoption means the near-impossibility of either adoptee or adoptive parent being able to take their relationship for granted. Because the parent-child relationship is established by law and not by nature, the relationship cannot be regarded as a simple fact of life as it is in natural families, by either adoptees or adoptive parents.

We often read of adoptive parents being the “psychological parents” of adoptees. Yet what does being a “psychological parent” mean? It means that the relationship is not natural, not clear-cut. It means that in adoptive families, the parent-child relationship may be something that must be continually proved because it cannot be assumed. One way adoptive parents may seek to “prove” that they are “the” parents and are necessary to adoptees is to make themselves essential, which may mean being more controlling than the typical parent. One way adoptees may “prove” they are their adoptive parents’ children is by being more childlike, more immature, more dependent than typical sons and daughters, even when they are chronologically adults. . . .

 Some adoptees may be less harmed by the disruption of the natural bond with their birthmothers than others. Some adoptive parents are better at empathizing than are others. Some are able to love and accept the children they adopt for who they really are, while others will never stop trying to mold adoptees into the natural children they could not have. But still adoption itself, I think, harms children. . . . Inside every adoptee lurks an abandoned child and that child hurts. . . .

Yes, I know that some non-adopted children are damaged by abuse, poverty or other ills. I know many single parents have one or more risk factors in their families. Yet most, maybe all, of the problems that face vulnerable natural parents can be eliminated by societal and familial support, while the problems that occur in adoption, particularly when the parents are infertile and the adoption is closed, are inherent in adoption and cannot be prevented or eliminated.”
http://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/archive/AndersonCAAA.htm

 As someone said in a Facebook page “Adoption Trauma” post: “As an adoptee raised in an extremely loving home, with a reunion that was a disaster, I can honestly say that the lies have to stop. As a civil society, we need to stop this nonsense of human trafficking disguised as adoption. If a mother cannot, absolutely cannot parent "her" child then legal guardianship should be appointed. Again I say, I had a lovely home but this adoption masquerade has to end! Grown adults should be mature enough to stop playing house and just raise the other women’s child but never ever insist on making the child play act in the drama of their life pretending to be their child. They are not their child but someone else's they are caretaking for! This is cruel and inhumane to be any different.” http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/adoption.trauma.7/posts/329901923758616?notif_t=feed_comment_reply

 I feel the same way as Lynn Beisner: "But for many women, like my mother, abortion would be an inconvenient act of courage and selflessness. I am sad for both of us that she could not find the courage and selflessness. But my attitude is that as long as I am already here, I might as well do all I can to make the world a better place, to ease the suffering of others, and to experience love and life to its fullest."

http://www.fem2pt0.com/2012/08/07/i-wish-my-mother-had-aborted-me/

Also, read Adoption can be such a tragedy part 1 and 2 in the links below:
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/07/adoption-can-be-such-tragedy-part-1.html
http://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2012/07/adoption-can-be-such-tragedy-part-2.html
 
Also, read  Discussing Politics